Video: The dynamic adjustment layer

In this movie, I'll show you how to apply Brightness Contrast as a Dynamic Adjustment layer. And I'm going to recommend that you use Adjustment layers for all your luminance adjustments, because you can always go back and modify the settings any time you like. I'm working inside Light butterfly.jpg, and you have a couple of different options for creating adjustment layers. One is to drop down to this little black white icon at the bottom of the Layers panel and click on it. The Adjustment layer start with Brightness Contrast and end with selective color, and they represent most of the static adjustments you can apply inside Photoshop.

Get the ultimate foundation in Adobe Photoshop CC, in this update to the flagship series Photoshop One-on-One. Deke takes you on a personalized tour of the basic tools and techniques that lie behind great images and graphic design, while keeping you up to speed with the newest features offered with Creative Cloud. Learn to open images from multiple sources, get around the panels and menus, and work with layers—the feature that allows you to perform masking, combine effects, and perform other edits nondestructively. Then Deke shows how to perform important editing tasks, such as cropping and straightening images, adjusting the luminance of your image, correcting color imbalances and enhancing color creatively, and finally, retouching and healing.

The dynamic adjustment layer

In this movie, I'll show you how to apply Brightness Contrast as a DynamicAdjustment layer. And I'm going to recommend that you useAdjustment layers for all your luminance adjustments, because you can always goback and modify the settings any time you like.I'm working inside Light butterfly.jpg, and you have a couple of different optionsfor creating adjustment layers. One is to drop down to this little blackwhite icon at the bottom of the Layers panel and click on it.The Adjustment layer start with Brightness Contrast and end with selective color, andthey represent most of the static adjustments you can apply inside Photoshop.

There are a few commands we saw in the Adjust submenu that don't work asAdjustment layers. At the top here are three commands thatallow you to apply Fill layers. They have nothing to do with luminance orcolor adjustment. The other way to work is to go up to theWindow menu and choose the Adjustments command.And that brings up the Adjustments panel, which nowadays merely allows you to create adjustments.You don't edit adjustments here. And notice that each of the Adjustmentlayers is represented by an icon. You just hover over the icon to see thename of the adjustment. I'm going to go ahead and click on thatfirst icon to create a Brightness Contrast layer.

Notice Photoshop creates a new layer in the Layers panel calledBrightness/Contrast 1. Plus, it automatically brings up the newProperties panel which is where I can edit my settings.And by the way, if the panel's getting in the way of seeing your image, you can makeit smaller if you like. If you've got all the screen real estatein the world, you can make the panel much larger, and that's going to give you morefine-tune control where the sliders are concerned.Anyway, I'm short on space, so I'm going to keep the panel small.I'll start things off by clicking on the Auto button in order to see what Photoshopcomes up with. So you still have an Auto button hereinside the Properties panel, and that is better, I suppose, but it's a littleheavy-handed where the contrast is concerned.

What I'm going to do is dial down the brightness to about negative 45 should work.And then, I'm going to take contrast down as well to about 70, in order to achievethis result here. Again, you want to leave the Use Legacycheckbox off. When you're done, you can just click thedouble arrow icon to hide the Properties panel.Now, happily, this is an independent layer of luminence correction.And I can turn it on or off as I like. So, if I want to see the before version ofthe image, I'll turn off the layer. If I want to see the after version, I turnon the layer. And meanwhile, the original image isaltogether unharmed. Whereas, if I take a look at what I did tothe dark butterfly, which still looks very good, those pixels are permanently modified.

So, in other words, when you apply a static adjustment, that's tantamount to adestructive edit inside Photoshop. I don't mean I've destroyed my image.I mean, I've permanently modified it, whereas with an Adjustment layer, it's notonly editable, but it's also dynamic and non-destructive.Now, of course, the advantage to the static modification is, I can go ahead andsave my changes over the original image to the JPEG file format.Because after all, this is a flat image, and JPEG doesn't support layers.

That's also a disadvantage because it means you can easily save over youroriginal, which is not something you necessarily want to do.The potential disadvantage with Light Butterfly with the Adjustment layer, is Ihave to save this as a native PSD document because it contains layers.But check out the size of the layered image.Down here in the lower left corner, you can see that the flat version of the imageis 15.1 megabytes. And after the slash that the layeredversion of the image is also 15.1 megabytes because Adjustment layersconsume just a few bytes of information. They are extremely small, they'reextremely efficient, and they are highly desirable ways to correct images in Photoshop.

A: Deke updated the course to reflect changes in the 2014
version of Photoshop CC. This includes everything from opening the program to
retouching your photographs with the Healing and Content-Aware tools.

Sorry, there are no matches for your search "" —to search again, type in another word or phrase and click search.

Learn by watching, listening, and doing, Exercise files are the same files the author uses in the course, so you can download them and follow along Premium memberships include access to all exercise files in the library.

Already a member ?

Learn by watching, listening, and doing! Exercise files are the same files the author uses in the course, so you can download them and follow along. Exercise files are available with all Premium memberships.
Learn more

Upgrade to our Annual Premium Membership today and get even more value from your lynda.com subscription:

“In a way, I feel like you are rooting for me. Like you are really invested in my experience, and want me to get as much out of these courses as possible this is the best place to start on your journey to learning new material.”— Nadine H.

Thanks for signing up.

We’ll send you a confirmation email shortly.

Sign up and receive emails about lynda.com and our online training library:

new course releases

newsletter

general communications

special notices

Here’s our privacy policy with more details about how we handle your information.

Keep up with news, tips, and latest courses with emails from lynda.com.

Sign up and receive emails about lynda.com and our online training library:

new course releases

newsletter

general communications

special notices

Here’s our privacy policy with more details about how we handle your information.